(CNN) Donald Trump and his family fail to report nearly $300,000 in gifts they received from foreign governments between 2017 and 2020, including a “larger-than-life-sized painting” of the former president that may currently reside at his Mar-a-Resort home. Lago, according to a new report by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and supporting documents obtained by CNN.
More than 100 gifts from foreign officials, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, totaling more than a quarter of a million dollars, were not disclosed by Trump and members of his immediate family as required. By law, as stated in the report.
House Democrats say the discovery of these unreported foreign gifts, including 17 gifts from Saudi Arabia totaling more than $48,000, “raises important questions about why former President Trump failed to disclose these gifts to the public” and whether have been used. To influence US policy under the previous administration. The report provides no specific evidence that US policy was influenced by the gifts.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told CNN that the fact that these items were never reported and that some are now missing “indicates serious violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause.”
“That part of the Constitution is America’s original anti-bribery law,” Raskin said, noting that lawmakers can make criminal referrals if there is evidence that justifies doing so.
“But really, bipartisan Congress needs to pass legislation to build meaningful enforcement mechanisms into the emoluments clause,” he added. “This will force us to take back the wisdom of the framers who maintained that people in public office, are not in the power of foreign governments.”
House Democrats have sought to point to Trump’s foreign engagements, as fellow Republicans and the oversight committee’s new Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, ramp up their own investigations into foreign dealings by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Last year, the State Department disclosed that it could not provide a full account of the foreign gifts Trump officials received during the president’s last year in office, but the interim report released Friday cites “new information obtained by {that} committee that reveals that the failure to The revelations about gifts from foreign governments were much broader than previously known and extended throughout the Trump administration.”
“Internal White House records obtained by the committee indicate that lists provided by the White House to the Office of the Chief of Protocol failed to include all foreign gifts received by former President Trump and the First Family, not only in 2020, but throughout the Trump administration.” report indicates.
“In total, records indicate that former President Trump and the First Family received 117 unreported foreign gifts, valued at approximately $291,000,” says the interim report. The report highlights undisclosed gifts from Saudi Arabia, Japan, India and China.
“In a legal sense, of course, it doesn’t make any difference whether they were completely reckless or deliberately decided to ignore the law and the Constitution, but morally, we can safely say that this is exactly the kind of little detail that Donald Trump likes to obsess over,” Raskin told CNN. .
Trump alone failed to report more than 50 foreign gifts — with an estimated total value of more than $150,000 — during his time in office, according to the House Democrat. In terms of foreign gifts shared with the State Department, Trump disclosed 36 in 2017, 17 in 2018, 23 in 2019, and zero in 2020.
The Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act prohibits the president and federal officials from keeping foreign gifts in excess of the minimum value, which is currently set at $415. The law also established a system for how information about foreign gifts should be publicly disclosed and allowed recipients of items over a specified dollar amount the option to buy and keep them.
The report adds that some of the gifts Trump received were worth tens of thousands of dollars, including an Uzbek silk carpet worth $12,000 and a dagger worth $35,000 from the Emir of Qatar.
Some items remain unaccounted for, including a “larger-than-life-size painting” of Trump that was ordered by El Salvador’s leader and delivered as a gift just before the 2020 election.
The committee obtained internal communications from the White House including correspondence about the shipment of the painting from the US Embassy in El Salvador to the United States, but found “no records of the disposition of the painting”.
NARA did not have any records for this board and the GSA [General Services Administration] He also didn’t have any records of purchasing this gift.”
However, despite GSA transfer documents indicating that the Director of Correspondence for Donald J. Trump’s office certified “full compliance with the final disposition of the gifts” in April 2021, some records indicate that the photo may have been transferred to Florida as “property.” Ex-president in July 2021.”
Email exchanges involving photos of the US ambassador to El Salvador standing next to a larger-than-life portrait of Trump suggest that staff were arranging for the State Department to help move the gift from the ambassador’s residence to the White House.
In this undated photo from an email obtained by CNN, US Ambassador to El Salvador Ronald Johnson poses with a plaque of former President Donald Trump at the US Embassy in El Salvador.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner sent the ambassador’s initial email about the painting to the White House staff, writing, “Can we take care of this – very nice” to which a former Trump White House staffer replied, “Yeah, it was sent for me already and I’ll get it to WH!”
The report lists another item that committee investigators have been unable to track down despite reviewing data from the White House, NARA, and GSA — a gift Kushner received from Egypt.
The White House Gift Office under the Trump administration asked the National Archives to transfer a number of gifts from its custody to the White House, which included this gift to Kushner. But there are no records locating this gift, a box decorated with silver patterns with an estimated value of $450.
Nor is there evidence to indicate that the box is currently in Kushner’s possession.
The committee also found that Kushner, his wife Ivanka Trump, and their children received 33 unreported gifts, totaling nearly $82,000.
According to the report, the committee identified 13 additional unreported foreign gifts addressed to both former President Trump and former first lady Melania Trump, totaling more than $22,000 in value.